‘Oh, lucky you, Ben,’ murmured Naya lazily. ‘I can’t wait to have mine – that will be the perfect end to this evening.’
Ben felt another tingle of anticipation. This place got better and better. He’d never needed a massage more, after the stress of the past few days, plus that long-ass plane ride and the bumpy drive to The Hideaway. He stretched upwards on the sunbed, swung his legs to the floor and luxuriated in a long stretch, groaning as he did.
‘It looks like you are already feeling relaxed?’ said Luisa with a gentle laugh. ‘I am happy to see this.’
He smiled and followed Luisa inside, registering the cold shock of the air conditioning as he stepped through the sliding doors. Its artificial coolness brought his high-rise office block in Silicon Hills to mind – the image slamming into his brainbefore he could stop it; and with it the memory of Trish, the way she’d looked at him across her mahogany desk just a few days ago, Ben staring at the floor, hands twisting in his lap.
No. Stop it, Ben. Put the thoughts away.He couldn’t let them cross his mind now, distract him from such a great evening.
Luisa, walking in front of him through the house, came to a stop outside a door that led off the back of the main kitchen and living room area. It opened into a small, windowless, pure white treatment room with a massage bed in its centre, glass diffusers billowing out lemongrass fragrance on a corner shelf, gentle spa music playing from a cream, oval-shaped speaker. The woman standing in the room looked to be in her late forties, short and squat with bobbed black hair and strong-looking forearms emerging from her white tunic.
‘This is Isabel,’ said Luisa. ‘Ben, you filled in the treatment forms, yes? Telling us about medical history, giving your consent for products. You did this when you arrived?’
‘Yeah,’ said Ben. ‘And I’m good with anything – come on then, Isabel, do your worst on these aching muscles.’ He gave her a wink.
‘Hola,’ said Isabel, returning his smile. ‘Of course. Please, change into this robe, then lie down on your front and place your head into the hole here. I will give you a moment of privacy.’
Luisa and Isabel stepped outside of the room, closing the door gently behind them, and Ben did as he was told, stripping out of his shirt and shorts, slipping into the robe, enjoying the touch of soft fabric on his skin. A moment later, Isabel returned, lathered her hands with sweet-smelling oil and got to work, performing long, gliding strokes along the taut muscles of his back and shoulders.
‘This pressure is good?’ she asked, after a moment of kneading with increasing firmness.
‘Mmm. Just right, thanks.’
As he lay there, lulled by the soft music and rhythmic movements, Ben’s mind began to drift again, out of his control. The same memory that had been playing on repeat was coming back to taunt him, even here, blissed out on a massage table, hundreds of miles away from where it had all played out.
How could Trish have done it? How could she have believed what she heard – and acted on it so fast?She didn’t even know the facts – the background. And even with what she knew, surely her decision was too rash. Ben had brought more new business to that overhyped fintech in the past two years than his predecessor had in the decade before. Ben lived and breathed that job: the high of new prospects, the rush of sealing deals. Now he was here, about as far from a client meeting in a hushed boardroom as he could get.
With the image of Trish in his mind – the memory of what had happened right before he’d come here – Ben’s fingers curled themselves into fists.
‘Try to relax, please, Ben,’ said Isabel. ‘You are tensing your whole body.’
‘Ah – sorry. Of course,’ he said, doing his best to breathe more deeply, to stretch his hands back out.
This wasn’t the time, or the place, to go over all that.
It was in the past. While he was here, and with Hannah’s help, he could start to properly put all of this behind him.
Yes, he reminded himself. He was here now. And he was going to get exactly what he came for.
CARLY
Carly’s phone told her it was five in the morning. So she’d been trying to get some rest, on and off, for the best part of six hours, on a king-size four-poster bed that looked so new and expensive she felt weird disturbing it bysleepingon it.
It was pointless: her mind was alert, her legs twitchy. An hour or so ago, while she was downstairs refilling her bottle with filtered water, she’d thought about shoving her walking boots back on and letting her restless feet take her out into the elements. But the bucketing rain soon changed her mind; where would she even go? She’d taken her water and gone back to bed.
For fuck’s sake, Carly, go to sleep.She was meant to be relaxing, wasn’t she? And this place, tonight – well, it was the ideal time to chill out, get some proper rest before the real work began. She should be drifting off into blissful oblivion on her perfectly form-fitting mattress.
Insomnia wasn’t normally an issue for her; she never struggled with either falling or staying asleep, even when things were tough. Amongst her sisters, her friends, Robyn – anyone who’d had the privilege of sharing a room with her – her ability to sleep like the dead was a running joke. A couple of years back,on a girls’ weekend away for someone’s birthday up in Chester, her mate Julie said she’d been doing an ear-splitting rendition of Katy Perry on the karaoke machine at the bottom of Carly’s bed; Carly – like a Welsh, thirty-something Sleeping Beauty – didn’t stir.
But here, in a tropical hideaway of all places, she was struggling. She was jittery, wired; her legs wouldn’t stop fidgeting under the covers; she was tossing and turning non-stop. And it didn’t help that someone – one of the other guests – kept walking around on the ground floor. She’d wondered at first if it was one of the staff, but then she remembered Luisa saying that she and Paola stayed in separate lodges behind the main building, so it could only be another guest. Carly couldn’t hear them, but her bedroom faced the stairs which led to the open-plan room downstairs, and through the gap underneath her door, she could see the lights below flickering on and off. She’d tried to block it out with her eye-mask, but now the idea of a restless soul wandering about below had taken root, and she couldn’t shake it off.
The tropical storm seemed to have died down now, after hours of violent winds buffeting the roof above her, sheets of rain battering the windows. At one point, it was so heavy she’d been worried the thick glass might shatter, with what sounded like pails of water smashing against her window. It was the loudest, longest storm she’d ever witnessed – not even the last time she was in a rainforest was there something like this – and she couldn’t imagine how they’d even step outside in the morning.
This is no use.Carly whipped off her sheets, swung her feet down onto the cool marble floor. Her mind floated back to the evening: a peaceful, relaxing night punctuated by the sounds ofthunder and the electricity going on and off as the relentless wind downed the pylons higher in the mountains. The sharp tang of Paola’sceviche; the pressure of Isabel’s firm hands on her neck and shoulders, kneading away the discomfort of her long journey here.
She thought about her fellow guests. She noticed her mind making its usual quick assumptions about each of them –addict, loner, trauma survivor, co-dependent– the snap judgements that her training had taught her, and which now she found impossible to switch off. It happened every time she met new people, even though she knew it displayed a gross lack of boundaries, something she’d hate if anyone did it to her.
Focus, Carly – you’re not here to be a therapist.
